For thought and meditation

[rl69]

The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying: "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you."

—Jeremiah 31:3

When my granddaughter Stella was a toddler, she wasn’t very good at playing hide and seek. She would hide in plain view and say, “Papa, find me!” Meanwhile, I’d be looking right at her.

I’d say, “Stella! I can’t find Stella! Where is Stella?”

She would jump out, laugh, and then go back to the same hiding place again. I played along with Stella to humor her.

In the Garden of Eden when God called out to His wayward son, “Adam, where are you?” was He oblivious to the whereabouts of Adam? Of course not. God knew exactly where he was. He was saying, in effect, “Adam, I miss our times together. Adam, why did you eat of the forbidden fruit? Adam, why are you hiding from Me? Adam, I want to talk with you.”

That is the heart of God. He says in Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, and let us reason together. . . . Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

If you want to see how God feels about this world, look at the trio of stories Jesus told in Luke 15. God is compared to a woman who lost a coin, a shepherd who lost a sheep, and a father who lost a son.

If we learn nothing else in the Bible, we learn that God loves humanity and longs for fellowship and friendship with us. We learn that God doesn’t want any person to go to Hell, and the best evidence of this is that He poured His wrath on His Son, who had never committed a single sin, so that we could be pardoned.

God searches for us. He cares for us. And He wants us to know Him.

[Blackwater]

A dear friend who recently died, died a devout believer. But one thing he could never quite "get" was how all his prior sins were completely forgiven, and forgotten - "as far as the east is from the west." He had always believed in accountability, and spent much of his time trying to help others, as an atonement for his past sins. “Come now, and let us reason together. . . . Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Mike just could never quite relate to that, but he never doubted it. He just knew he couldn't yet understand it. Now that he's with the Lord, I'm sure he understands quite well what it all meant.

I will always stand in awe of God's and Christ's willingness and ability to forgive and forget our sins! What a wondrous and loving and forgiving Lord and God we serve!!!!

[Thundarstick]

Many feel a need to "earn" salvation by being "good enough", but good enough isn't obtainable! We can NEVER be reconciled to God by our own works, yet Christ seeks us in perfect love. While we where yet sinners Christ died for us. Praise God almighty for ever and ever! Amen!

[Boaz]

Many feel a need to "earn" salvation by being "good enough", but good enough isn't obtainable! We can NEVER be reconciled to God by our own works, yet Christ seeks us in perfect love. While we where yet sinners Christ died for us. Praise God almighty for ever and ever! Amen!

Thank you Thundarstick .

[square butte]

I don't think my understanding of it will ever be quite adequate in this life - But I do believe it. And I have experienced Grace. Thank you for the lesson this morning

[Blackwater]

Amen, Tstick! I have trouble really "getting it" fully myself. Our minds are limited, possibly by time and space themselves. God's is NOT so limited, and I will NEVER understand all that He is and knows and does! I have come to regard myself as simply one of his billions of wards - people He cares for more than we often care for ourselves, or even know how to care for ourselves! The more I contemplate just how BIG God really is, and how much His existence encompasses, the more I feel like a flyspeck in the ocean! My mind just won't stretch far enough to conceive of even a tiny portion of what He HAS to be!

He created the entire universe from nothing! And gave us life, and all we need to sustain that life. Yes, there are dangers and poisons in our world, but He also gave us the antidotes and a mind that CAN deal with danger pretty well, if we'll just USE it for such! The more I know about God, the more I realize that there is that I CANNOT know, simply because my mind isn't big enough. And this always humbles me severely, and that's a GOOD thing! Who could NOT be humbled when they think of just how huge and all powerful and omnipresent He truly is? Knowing one's place in the universe's scheme of things is the seeds of the roots of wisdom. "Fear of the Lord is the root of all wisdom," and that fear is borne most readily and completely in the realization of just who and what God truly is - or at least as much of what He is as we can know. "Fear of the Lord" I think, can often if not usually be translated as "humbleness before the Lord." For anyone who truly realizes what God is, or as much of it as we can conceive of, MUST then be naturally humbled, and humbled in the extreme.

It's increasingly evident that God constructed the whole universe so that we could know Him by his handiwork. Is our God a loving and kind and benificent God, or what?